The marriage of traditional and desktop publishing methods is not without conflict, confusion—and lots of calculation. To ease some of the problems, a graphic designer for American Demographics, a 95 percent desktop-published magazine, has developed a HyperTalk-based program for calculating enlargements and reductions of photographs and illustrations. Designer John Parsons wrote GraphiCalc so that he could translate traditional printer's picas into PostScript picas online.
Before writing GraphiCalc, Parsons struggled through the following steps: (1) measuring photos and illustrations in printer's picas; (2) converting printer's picas to decimals of inches; (3) switching the PostScript pica default on his page layout program to inches; (4) entering the decimals of inches; (5) switching back to the PostScript default on his page layout program; (6) entering the percentage enlargement or reduction desired.
GraphiCalc has enabled Parsons to convert from original measurements to final reductions or enlargements—using only one HyperCard screen. He estimates that he can now do ten such conversions in the time he formerly spent doing one. GraphiCalc also lets him enter original and final measurements first, and then calculate the percentage of enlargement or reduction required.
A third GraphiCalc calculation compensates for the size distortion that often occurs with plain-paper laser printers. If your printer is not perfectly accurate, you can print a document, measure its inaccuracy, and then type the name of the printer and the inaccuracy measurement into your GraphiCalc stack. From then on, you can select Find Input, and the program will compensate to produce WYSIWYG output.
GraphiCalc will also create a file that logs all of your calculations, so you won't have to constantly move back and forth between computer and paper. Then you can save the file and print it out later when it's time to jot down the new measurements on the back of your photos or illustrations.
GraphiCalc requires HyperCard and will run on any Mac with 1MB of RAM, but running it in tandem with another application requires at least 2MB. (Parsons has 5MB and uses GraphiCalc with PageMaker and Adobe Illustrator running all at once under MultiFinder.)
- (Macworld, April 1989)
John E. Parsons
Applications
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4 / 
2015-08-11 / 
2023-10-28 / 
83a7660f3e41ff7511b5fc211c2f3a611100b298 / 
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graphicalc_dsk.zip
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
Mini vMac
